N. Korea threatens U.S. bases in Pacific

Friday

Mar 22, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 22, 2013 at 10:57 AM

North Korea yesterday threatened to attack U.S. bases in Japan and the island of Guam in retaliation for training missions by B-52 bombers over the Korean Peninsula, as state radio blared air-raid warnings to North Koreans.

North Korea yesterday threatened to attack U.S. bases in Japan and the island of Guam in retaliation for training missions by B-52 bombers over the Korean Peninsula, as state radio blared air-raid warnings to North Koreans.

Until the 1990s, air-raid drills had been a popular tool for the Pyongyang regime to highlight the perceived threat of a U.S. invasion and to instill in its people a sense of crisis and solidarity.The one-hour air-raid drill yesterday came amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula after the North’s nuclear test on Feb. 12 and the subsequent U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang.

Nuclear-capable B-52 bombers, taking off from Guam, previously had flown missions over South Korea as part of joint military exercises. But this month, the Pentagon took the rare action of publicly announcing those missions to reaffirm the United States’ “nuclear umbrella” for South Korea and Japan at a time of rising anxiety over the North’s nuclear threats.South Korean news media also carried photos of a U.S. nuclear sub making a port call at a South Korean naval base.

“The U.S. should not forget that the Anderson Air Force Base on Guam, where B-52s take off, and naval bases in Japan proper and Okinawa, where nuclear-powered submarines are launched, are within the striking range of the (our) precision strike means,” a spokesman for the North Korean army told the state-run Korean Central News Agency yesterday.